Welcome to my blog, ‘Just A Few More Moments” which is a follow-on from my first book, ‘Just A Moment.’ I hope you are really encouraged by the book, and I just seek to continue those words of encouragement in this blog in the same sort of style, using everyday examples in life, and bringing some truths from the Word of God.
I thought for my first blog, I should tell you a bit about how this book came into being. I had never intended to write a book, but was encouraged to do so after producing some devotionals online for over a year during the lockdowns. Having said that, as I have been thinking about it, this book was really “born” a long time before lockdown. It is more the result of a journey.
Part of that journey was being brought up in a home that was marked by sickness. Dad was ill from his early 30s, (in the early 1970s) through the need for open-heart surgery on a valve. He took a number of strokes afterwards, and spent a number of years in his bedroom, ill. From what I recall, in the 1980s, Dad was in hospital at some stage every year of that decade. Mum looked after him for forty years. For most of those 40 years he could not walk, and for a number of years also could not talk. In those years, there were many things to discourage. It seemed sometimes that it was one blow after another. Many times Dad took so bad that the outlook was bleak, but he always pulled back through the Grace of God. In times like those, there were people who came along, who you could just describe as pure gems, and their help and encouragement through those difficult years was invaluable. It was in those times that we learned the value of encouragement.
On a more personal basis, I know the value of encouragement through periods of depression. Encouragement came from different sources, and of course ultimately through the Word of God – and helped pull me through.
But the bridge between the darkness and where God has brought me today – was encouragement. That was the link in the chain. There are many people around the world today, and the difference between making it through and giving up could be just one word of encouragement. Life is a battle. In a war, the enemy will send out broadcasts with information about how well they are doing (true or otherwise). They will do leaflet-drops telling the people they are attacking that there is no use to resist – they are going to lose and they should surrender. The more the people hear those broadcasts, and read those leaflets, the more hopeless and discouraged they will feel.
It is the same in the spiritual. The more the enemy attacks your mind, and the more you listen to that propaganda, the more you will be discouraged. In Judges 20, as God’s people prepared to go into battle. they asked the Lord which tribe should lead them. He said “Judah” (Judges 20:18). Judah means praise. Then in verse 22, they “encouraged themselves.” God has given us the weapons, not only of the armour of God (Ephesians 6) but also of praise and encouragement. Who can we encourage today? Who can we help to lift up today?
Psalm 3:3 says that the Lord is “the lifter up of my head.” I trust that the book, “Just A Moment” and this blog will be a means of lifting up heads that are hanging down through discouragement and hopelessness and point to Jesus, the Light of the world.
I hope you will enjoy the future posts in this blog, as we take ‘Just A Few More Moments’ to look at life, to look at the Word of God, and bring encouragement in difficult days.
God bless,
Philip
